Christmas - December 1944.
PRIMO LEVI was held at Auschwitz III (Monowitz)
Levi recounted the memorable Christmas of 1944 1/n Though they understood the war may soon be ending, Levi and his fellow prisoners knew nothing of their fate. 2/n So as December wore on and snow engulfed the camp and the factory where Levi worked, things both had changed and were the same as always.
Until Christmas: "It was a memorable Christmas for the world at war; memorable for me too, because it was marked by a miracle.
Dec 15 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
15th December 1941: 1/n The photographic evidence taken at the Skede Beach massacre Liepāja, Latvia. 2/n Photo: Jews from Liepāja on the dunes of the village of Šķēde, north of Liepāja, where they were murdered, 15-17 December 1941. The 2,750 victims were apprehended in Liepāja; after selection they were brought to Šķēde, where they were marched to ditches dug in the sand. They
Dec 14 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
David Wisnia sang for his captors in Auschwitz to save his life 1/n David “Saba” Wisnia (1926-2021) never told his wife, children or grandchildren the whole truth about how he survived the Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. 2/n The family knew his singing voice had entertained the guards, and that his musical gift had changed his fate.
David was a prisoner of Auschwitz for close to 3 years. He stayed alive by singing to entertain the Nazi guards and cell block leaders.
Dec 13 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
She lived an unspeakable hell. As both an inmate and head women’s doctor at Auschwitz, Dr. GISELLA PERL saved hundreds of lives with her bare hands. 1/n In 1944, Dr. Perl was working as a gynecologist, had just married a surgeon and was living in a Jewish 2/n ghetto with her family in Hungary (modern-day Romania). In March of that year, Dr. Perl and her husband, son, parents and extended family were sent to Auschwitz, where they were immediately separated. Her young daughter, however, was hidden with a non-Jewish family.
Dec 13 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
December 13, 1943:
The Kalavryta Holocaust - Greece's darkest hour 1/n Today, one of the worst atrocities in World War II history is remembered, when more than 1,200 male residents of the town of Kalavryta and surrounding villages were gunned down by Nazi German invaders. 2/n In November 1943, the German 117th Jäger Division began an operation to root out Greek guerrilla fighters in the mountainous area surrounding Kalavryta. During the operation, 77 German soldiers were captured by Greek rebels and killed.
Dec 12 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
December 12, 1941
The Reich Chancellery meeting 1/n (1 day after the declaration of war against the U.S.),
was a meeting between Adolf Hitler and the highest-ranking officials of the Nazi party. 2/n Almost all important party leaders were present to hear Hitler declare the ongoing destruction of the Jewish race, yet it remains less known than the later Wannsee Conference. The announcement Hitler made on 12 December to the Reichsleiter and Gauleiter refers to an earlier
Dec 11 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Thursday December 11, 1942 1/n Twenty-seven-year-old SS-Hauptsturmführer Friedrich Charles Entress, a Nazi physician, begins working at Auschwitz I. He is an ethnic German of Polish descent. He is considered to be one of the most cruel Nazi doctors in the camp. He sends thousands 2/n of prisoners to death during selection, and sometimes, he executes the selected prisoners by injections himself and performs experiments on them. He always keeps a straight face; he sends people to their death without mercy. Often, his decision is made only after a fleeting
Dec 11 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak 1/n One of the most moving accounts of life and death in a Jewish ghetto under Nazi occupation was written by Dawid Sierakowiak, a teenager from Lodz. Dawid recorded his diary in five notebooks, beginning a few months before the war 2/n and continuing through April 15th, 1943. He wrote about a wide variety of subjects of importance to the ghetto residents as they struggled to survive the harsh conditions imposed by lack of food, medicine, and other basic necessities.
Dec 9 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
In the female camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau,
Stanislawa Leszczyńska received childbirths, trying to save mothers & refusing to kill newborn babies.
At least 700 babies were born in Auschwitz.
thread 1/n 2/n Most pregnant women at Auschwitz were simply sent to the gas chambers. Women who found out they were pregnant at the camp were sometimes given abortions. Often, when women were discovered to be pregnant they were summarily executed. When Leszczyńska heard what was expected of
Dec 8 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
CHELMNO (Kulmhof), the first Nazi extermination camp, opened #OTD December 8, 1941. 1/n The first commandant was Herbert Lange. The camp consisted of two parts: administration section, barracks and storage for plundered goods; burial and cremation site. 2/n It operated three gas vans using carbon monoxide. The camp began operations on December 7, 1942, and ended on March 1943. It resumed operations June 23, 1944, and finally ceased operations January 17, 1945. The estimated number of deaths is 150-300,000, mainly Jews.
Dec 7 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
NN - Nacht und Nebel - December 7, 1941
(German for "Night and Fog"). 1/n Nacht und Nebel was a special punishment class during World War II to make resistance members disappear without a trace. The penalty class was instituted by the 'Chef des Oberkommando der Wehrmacht' 2/n Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel by order of Adolf Hitler. It was in France, during the autumn of 1941, that Hitler found a political pretext to justify his new measures, when a series of attacks were aimed at the German army on French soil. Thus, when the German police arrested
Nov 25 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
The #Righteous during World War Two
Jan Zwartendijk, the angel of Lithuania
A Dutch Consul saved more than 2,000 Jewish lives
1/n One day at the end of June 1940, Isaac Lewin and his Dutch wife Pessla, both Polish Jews, knock on the door of 2/n a certain Jan Zwartendijk in the Lithuanian capital Kaunas. In addition to director of the Philips Lithuania branch, the Dutchman has recently also become deputy consul. Isaac and Pessla want to leave for fear of the advancing Nazis and Soviets. They cannot apply for a visa
Nov 24 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
Wilhelm Brasse (December 3, 1917 – October 23, 2012)
The photographer of Hell on Earth 1/n Polish by birth, Brasse had been deported as a political prisoner to Auschwitz in August 1940 for refusing to join the German army. 2/n Picked out because he had once been a photographer, Brasse was set to work for the Auschwitz Identification Service. The job was simple enough: men and women would line up outside the studio each morning, accompanied by a kapo — inmates who were often just as brutal as their
Nov 22 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Dr. Ludwik Fleck:
How vaccine-makers fooled the Nazis from inside a concentration camp lab 1/n
"We made a typhus vaccine that did not work. For controls we sent a sample that did work. The illiterates didn’t realize what was going on." 2/n Confined first at Auschwitz then Buchenwald, Jewish microbiologist Ludwik Fleck conspired with a ragtag team of scientists and rebels to send dud typhus vaccines to the German soldiers on the eastern front.
The good vaccine was administered to vulnerable people in the camp.
Nov 19 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
Hinda Cohen - a powerful message in tiny shoes 1/n
Tzipporah (née Barka) and Dov Cohen lived in Kovno. Their first child died at birth before the war.
With the German invasion of Lithuania, the couple tried unsuccessfully to escape to Soviet territory, and eventually found 2/n themselves back home in Kovno. On 18 January 1942, about 6 months after their relocation to the Kovno ghetto, Tzipporah and Dov had a baby girl. They named her Hinda, after Tzipporah’s mother. In late November 1943,
Hinda's parents: Tzipporah and Dov
Nov 16 • 10 tweets • 4 min read
Wilhelm Hosenfeld, savior of "The Pianist", Wladyslaw Szpilman
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Although Hosenfeld had already joined the NSDAP in 1935, he soon lost his illusions about the regime and was appalled by the crimes against Poles and Jews that he witnessed. Throughout his military service, he kept
a diary in which he expressed his feelings. The texts survived as he regularly sent the notebooks home. In his notes, Hosenfeld emphasized his growing outrage at the oppression of the Poles by the regime, the persecution of the Polish clergy, the mistreatment of the Jews and,
Nov 16 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Transport XXI from Dossin Barracks, Belgium to Auschwitz-Birkenau on 31 July, 1942 1/n On July 31, 1943 Giza, born Gitel Wachspress in Tarnow, together with her lover David Weissblum, a furrier, was put on transport XXI to Auschwitz.
The life of this courageous couple became a 2/n symbol of resistance and courage during dark times. After their flight to Belgium in July 1939, they later had to flee to France during the German invasion. When they returned to Antwerp in 1940, they discovered that their house had been looted.
Nov 14 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
1/n "Aktion T4", the Nazi euthanasia program
T4 Program, Nazi German effort—framed as a euthanasia program—to kill incurably ill, physically or mentally disabled, emotionally distraught, and elderly 2/n people. Adolf Hitler initiated the program in 1939, and, while it was officially discontinued in 1941, killings continued covertly until the military defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945.
Within a few months the T4 Program—named for the Chancellery offices that directed it from the
Nov 13 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
German camp brothels in World War II 1/n In World War II, Nazi Germany established brothels in the concentration camps (Lagerbordelle) to create an incentive for prisoners to collaborate, although these institutions were used mostly by Kapos, 2/n functionaries and the criminal elements, because regular inmates, penniless and emaciated, were usually too debilitated and wary of exposure to SS schemes. In the end, the camp brothels did not not produce any noticeable increase in the prisoners' work productivity
Nov 12 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
Camp Amersfoort - The Netherlands 1/n During the Second World War, the Nazis used Camp Amersfoort as a concentration camp. During the war years, approximately 40,000 people were held captive in the camp for a short or longer period of time. Hundreds of them died in the camp. 2/n Camp Amersfoort was originally intended as a transit camp, where prisoners could be temporarily housed before deportation to Germany. But the camp also served as a punishment- and labor camp. A total of 20,200 prisoners were transported from Amersfoort to camps in Germany.
Nov 11 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
Lisette Moru
"The Smile from Auschwitz" 1/n Marie-Louise Pierrette Moru, known as Lisette, was born on July 27, 1925. Her father, Joseph Moru, worked in the shipyard in nearby Lorient. Her mother, Suzanne Gahinet was a fish trader. Lisette was the eldest of three children. 2/n A rebel at heart, Lisette couldn’t stand the Occupation. She wore a Cross of Lorraine – the symbol of Free France – under her jacket collar. She’d take any opportunity she could to thumb her nose behind a German soldier’s back – she wasn’t shy; she’d do it in full view.